Workmen's advocate., 1887-01-22
JOHN JAkOBY'S SPEECH.

UOT1lN JHNOoI D OTCCCT1. ' The translation by Florence Kelley Wischnewetzky which will be found in another column is one of the classics of the German pamphlet literature of So- cialism. In the sixteen years which have elapsed since John Jakoby thus formulated the Object of the Labor Movement, that task has perhaps never been more successfully performed.
 Yet there are two points in which So- cialists to-day will not agree with the author as to the means by which the Ob- iect of the Labor Movement is to be attained. Year by year experience dem onstrates the futilty of looking to the Employing Class and the State for CO., operation in the effort to carry peace fully to its consummation the transition from the wages system to the Socialist organization of Society.
 The individual employer who rOHid recognize his employe "as his own equal
  and treat him accordingly, gives place more and more to the corporation with no body to be kicked and no soul to be damned" And it were folly indeed to look to the Capitalist corporations of America to promote the transition to the Socialist system That would be
 
 asking them to commit suicide.
 Moreover the State becomes year by year more completely the property, the willing tool, of these same corporations and less capable of action in the interest of the people Such slender concessions as it makes in the direction of protecting and advancing the interests of the work ing class are made in answer to the de- mands of Labor organized so powerfully that its demand is threat And so far as it dares, the State of to-day renders illusory the tritles that it yielded. If we pass in review the demands which John Jakoby makes of the State we find that, here in America, when the Government yielded to the demand for the eight t-hour working day for it's employees, the en- fprcement of the law remained practi cally W In the separate States the eight-hour law, wherever passed, is either dead letter or vitiated in the first place by the private contract clause. The prohibition of the employment of children under fourteen years of age, though in some States enacted, is gener- ally evaded for want of adequate inspec- ton or of that indispensable accompani- ment of such prohibition, sufficient school accommodation and an efficiently enforced compulsory law. A graduated income tax could be imposed by the Government only under the stress of the civil war and the State was the far-toO- humble servant of its plutocratic owners to attempt stringent enforcement In- stead of a reform of our system of bank ing credit we are offered Mr. IIewitt's bill.
 It is evident that all hope of help to- wards the peaceful solution of the Labor Question by the Employing Class and the State is ihusory. The transition from the Wage-System to the Socialstic organization of society is going on around us and its peaceful consumma- ton clearly rests with the Working Glass. The clearer the insight of the workers the speedier and more peaceful the change. "ln proportion as the proleta- riat absorbs socialistic and communistic clements, will the Revolution diminish in bloodshcd, revenge and savagery."